Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Sword of Swords with Jimmy Wang-Yu and Li Ching

I may have to turn-in my fanboy card for saying it, but I am getting bored with Jimmy Wang-Yu.

Yeah, Master of The Flying Guillotine was pretty cool in a silly way, but I can recall now how, when I was watching a marathon of Cheng Pei-Pei wuxia films, I simply couldn't enjoy the bizarrely bloody The Golden Swallow. Yes, it had been directed by the great Chang Cheh, but where the other films felt a tiny bit light -- thanks to Pei-Pei's nimble ballet-infused prowess -- this film suddenly felt very heavy and oppressive.

The difference for me as a viewer was as stark as that between John Ford's She Wore A Yellow Ribbon and Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch; both Westerns with minor thematic similarities but both worlds apart in tone and delivery.

Which brings me to the 1968 production of Sword of Swords. The one good thing I can say about this film is that it stars quite a few familiar faces from other Shaw wuxia epics: Tian Feng, from Cheng Pei-Pei's Raw Courage, and Huang Chung Hsin, from Cheng Pei-Pei's Dragon Swamp, play villains here; look for Yeung Chi Hing, from Jenny Hu's River of Tears and Ouyang Sha Fei, from Li Ching's Sweet and Wild, both wasted here.

As for Li Ching's role: she's simply here to get beaten -- more than once -- and thus spur Jimmy's character to revenge.

Additionally, the film was directed by Cheng Kang, who is the father of legendary action choreographer and director Ching Siu-Tung.

Jimmy Wang-Yu plays the nearly stoic member of a brotherhood at odds over possession of the mysitical Sword of Swords which seems to have the power of wind if wielded correctly (as shown in an early, silly scene).

The film is a set of scenes of Jimmy refusing to fight, or hiding the titular Sword from the baddies, only to be beaten, have his family beaten, his house burned, and get blinded in the process.

Of course, he's the hero so even though he's got blades in his eyeballs (!) and he's stabbed and it's snowing, he doesn't die but simply freezes for a spell before being revived by a kindly poor woman.

The film wasn't playful or witty enough to be interesting (like a Tsui Hark wuxia film), or have an interesting story to tell (like a King Hu film).

Even though this film was not directed by Chang Cheh, it felt like a Chang Cheh film so, if you're a fan of the guy's ultra-violent and uber-male films, I'd say you'd like this.

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About Me

I write about stuff I like.
Born in Washington, D.C., in 1967, I spent most of my life in Maryland before I moved to Hong Kong at the very end of 2011. I worked in Kowloon, and lived on Lamma Island, for nearly 3 years, and then I moved back to Maryland with my wife at the end of August 2014. When I was younger, I worked in 3 record stores in College Park, Maryland, from 1987 to 1990 and those jobs gave me a lot of joy, as well as a musical education. I was once a huge fan of the cinema of Hong Kong, especially Shaw Brothers titles. An Anglophile, I still gravitate to British films and music. My youth was spent on Marvel comics, and Starlog and Famous Monsters magazines; Universal and Hammer horror movies; the work of Ray Harryhausen; classic American films of the 1930s; Hanna-Barbera cartoons; music from the glory days of American AM radio; lousy TV reruns; Mego toys; and Godzilla flicks...